THE black people who were forcibly removed from their homeland (Africa) and were shipped to America to be sold as slaves faced the worst racial abuse by white people.
This abuse went on for hundreds of years and even extended into the 20th century. In this series we shall focus on the black slave’s experiences through this trying period and the atrocities that his white slave master committed against him.
Once sold on the slave markets, the slave would be signed over to the buyer who would from then on be his legal owner.
Buying a slave was relatively expensive and mostly only wealthy whites would purchase them in big numbers.
The poorer whites who wanted slaves usually opted to buy a few and then let them breed like animals to increase the numbers.
According to the laws of slavery, if a black slave had any offspring, they would all be born slaves too and would belong to their father’s slave master.
To stamp his authority over the newly born slaves, the slave master would ensure that the slave children bear his last name for a surname.
To this day, most black Americans are known by their grand fathers’ slave names such as ‘Smith’, ‘Simmons’, ‘White’ and so on.
Another common practice was the raping of the female slaves by the white slave master.
Some slave owners would boost the numbers of female slaves as part of the breeding scheme and engage themselves in an orgy of rapes not only to satisfy their beastly erotic desire, but also to increase the numbers of their slaves.
The babies born to the raped black women would be called ‘mullato’, meaning ‘of mixed race’.
Despite being biological children of the slave master the ‘mullato’ were born slaves.
Because of the ‘mullato’ phenomenon, it became a requirement at the slave market for sellers to indicate whether the slave was a ‘mullato’ or a ‘Negro’.
The animal nature of the white slave master was better demonstrated when the female ‘mullato’ children of the slave master, by rape, reached puberty and were also raped by the same slave master who biologically, is their father.
Some slave masters eventually established brothels and virtually drowned in debauchery.
Basically, the fate of the slave after being sold on the markets depended on the master who bought him or her.
In the case of the black male slaves who were talented, the white slave master would use them to compete in games like cock fighting and wrestling with the financial benefits accruing from the slave’s prowess benefiting the slave master.
The sport competitions, which included fighting, were between the black slaves with the white slavers watching and betting.
The fighting competitions between the slaves of different slave masters were organised mainly for the entertainment and pleasure of white people.
The slave fighters were not rewarded for their sweat and blood expended during the brutal fights in which the participants engaged to impress their masters.
The majority of the wealthy whites who could afford slaves were farmers by profession.
This means that most of the black people forcibly taken from Africa would end up on a farm as farm workers.
Because they were slaves and considered as property, the blacks were not given any salary and they worked all day from sunrise to sunset.
The blacks who worked on the farms were known as field hands.
The blacks were made to plant, treat and harvest crops like cotton, sugarcane, tobacco etc.
The slave master would treat his black slaves as their herd of cattle.
For example, the white slave master would choose who was to mate with whom among his black slaves so as to produce a desired result.
This is known as selective breeding.
To ensure the next generation of slaves was physically strong and more productive, the slave master would pick out the strongest among his male slaves and have them sleep with equally strong slave girls.
Through this practice, lovers among the slave population would be split.
To avoid the prospect of that happening, some lovers among the slave population would run away.
The runaway slaves when caught faced hell.
The whites would ride on horses with hounds to track the slave down.
Other whites would higher slave catchers to track down the runaway slave.
A runaway slave had, but his two feet and in many cases he would not be too familiar with the terrain.
When caught, the runaway slave would be treated harshly.
On horseback, the whites had guns, swords, nets, whips and axes to hunt down the runaway slaves.
In many cases, the runaway slave would arrive back to his master’s plantation in a very bad physical state.
The slave catchers would tie up the runaway slave to their horses and gallop back to the plantation at horse speed.
On arrival at the farm, the runaway slave would be tied up and fellow slaves were forced to beat him to unconsciousness using a bull whip.
Their objective was for the other blacks to fear running away from the white master.
The use of blacks to do the dirty work would cause the blacks to hate each other although they were acting at the command of the white master.
Repeat offenders faced more lethal punishments such as castration, and the chopping off of body parts such as the foot.
The blacks were not allowed to leave the plantation unless they had a pass which they would be required to present every time they were seen in a public place. Even with the pass, it was very risky for a black person to be seen walking without his master.
A lone black man on the street was treated like a stray dog and the whites would ask; “Where is this boy’s master?”
Some of these slaves would be abducted by slave catchers and would be prone to abuse.
The whites enjoyed punishing blacks and if a slave failed to present his pass, they would take out their tools of punishment and brutalise him.